4 ms·

Was OS/2 tied to the PS/2 and MCA? In my first job out of school in the early 1990s, all the developers had OS/2 workstations. It was a good OS, stable, multita

Was OS/2 tied to the PS/2 and MCA? In my first job out of school in the early 1990s, all the developers had OS/2 workstations. It was a good OS, stable, multitasked well, and from memory Microsoft didn't really equal it until Windows NT4 or maybe even 2000. From my perspective OS/2 didn't fail for technical reasons, it must have been IBM trying to recapture the PC as a proprietary platform when the market really wanted something that would run on any PC clone.

flomo 8y ago
Not strictly, but the original plan was to have Microsoft market OS/2 2.0 to the clone makers. So when MS walked away, IBM didn't have a good story for 3rd parties. OS/2 2 had drivers for stuff with names like "IBM 3142" and you had to know whether that was the equivalent of an Adaptec SCSI adaptor or HP LaserJet printer. The association with PS2/MCA certainly muted OS/2's reception though.
- yuhong 8y ago
  That OS/2 2.0 debacle is one of my favorite topics BTW. It ended up in the end much worse than that.
mr_toad 8y ago
I ran OS/2 on a 486. One of the issues that held back adoption was it’s system requirements - you needed a minimum of 8MB of RAM for it to run smoothly, but most systems being sold at that time had 2-4MB.
iforgotpassword 8y ago
I was quite young back then, but I started on os/2 and after about half a year we switched to nt4. I never used any windows before that, but nt felt much more mature. Unfortunately I don't recall the version of os/2 in use, but we mostly didn't upgrade the workstations when we switched and windows still felt "better", although I do remember some os/2 fans at our place complained about nt4 being a memory hog when the switch was announced. Iirc we had it running nicely on 8mb 486 even, and the visual basic 5 ide ran lightning fast. Stability wise, my os/2 time was probably too short anyways, but I don't remember either os as unstable.

flomo 8y ago

Not strictly, but the original plan was to have Microsoft market OS/2 2.0 to the clone makers. So when MS walked away, IBM didn't have a good story for 3rd parties. OS/2 2 had drivers for stuff with names like "IBM 3142" and you had to know whether that was the equivalent of an Adaptec SCSI adaptor or HP LaserJet printer. The association with PS2/MCA certainly muted OS/2's reception though.

yuhong 8y ago
That OS/2 2.0 debacle is one of my favorite topics BTW. It ended up in the end much worse than that.

mr_toad 8y ago

I ran OS/2 on a 486. One of the issues that held back adoption was it’s system requirements - you needed a minimum of 8MB of RAM for it to run smoothly, but most systems being sold at that time had 2-4MB.

iforgotpassword 8y ago

I was quite young back then, but I started on os/2 and after about half a year we switched to nt4. I never used any windows before that, but nt felt much more mature. Unfortunately I don't recall the version of os/2 in use, but we mostly didn't upgrade the workstations when we switched and windows still felt "better", although I do remember some os/2 fans at our place complained about nt4 being a memory hog when the switch was announced. Iirc we had it running nicely on 8mb 486 even, and the visual basic 5 ide ran lightning fast. Stability wise, my os/2 time was probably too short anyways, but I don't remember either os as unstable.